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Nvidia’s RTX 5000-series graphics cards have been dominating the tech world for well over a year now, with one of the most highly speculated cards being the Nvidia RTX 5090. It’s the flagship of the lineup and will likely be the best graphics card on the market when it actually launches, certainly in terms of raw performance.
Considering how well the current flagship Nvidia RTX 4090 reviewed (we named it one of the best graphics cards ever released ), expectations are high for next-gen cards, and the RTX 5090 in particular carries the burden. The Nvidia Lovelace generation as a whole has been a mixed bag in terms of performance and pricing, which puts even more pressure on the 5090 to succeed on both fronts.
It’s still too early to say whether it can live up to those expectations, though, with much more to learn until it’s officially revealed by Nvidia. For now, let’s take a look at what we do know thanks to all the rumors and leaks, which are aplenty.
Nvidia RTX 5090: Get straight to the point
- What is it? Nvidia’s rumored flagship of its next-generation RTX graphics cards
- How much is it? Not yet known at this time, but will likely be similar in price to the RTX 4090 – or even slightly more expensive
- When can I get it? We don’t expect the Nvidia RTX 5090 until late 2024 or early 2025, but the RTX 5080 could arrive sooner
Nvidia RTX 5090: Latest News
Nvidia RTX 5090: Release Date
While there’s no official release date for the Nvidia RTX 5090, the rumor mill has given us some idea of when the card might arrive. And since the global chip shortage has eased, there are no delays predicted for the next-gen chip either.
All signs point to the release not happening until late 2024 or early 2025 at the earliest, which is in line with the normal 18-24 month release cycle that Nvidia typically uses for its GeForce graphics cards.
There are also recent rumors suggesting it could come out after the RTX 5080, which could push the RTX 5090’s release back to 2025. The rumor mill seems to have been going back and forth a bit lately, so we’ll just have to keep an eye on the rumors for more. But for now, speculation is still leaning towards the RTX 5080 hitting shelves first, and a possible CES 2025 launch (perhaps both next-gen Blackwell graphics cards will be revealed at that event, even if the RTX 5080 goes on sale before the flagship).
Nvidia RTX 5090: Specifications
Quite a bit of information has emerged regarding the specifications of the Nvidia RTX 5090, with the flagship graphics card being based on Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture.
We’ve heard that the 16-pin 12V 2×6 power connector could be a standard feature for the 5090 and other 5000-series cards, meaning even third-party board partners should adopt it. The RTX 5090 is also rumored to feature a 448-bit memory bus and 28Gbps GDDR7 memory modules, which would be 33% faster than the 21Gbps memory modules in the RTX 4090. Another rumor speculates that the next-gen flagship card will also feature 28GB of VRAM.
We recently heard rumors that Nvidia would finally be switching some of its Blackwell GPUs to a multi-chiplet module (MCM) design, following in the footsteps of AMD and Intel. Whether this will also include the Nvidia RTX 5090 isn’t clear, however, as rumors have only specified the GB100 GPU, a commercial chip aimed at servers, data centers, and industrial uses. If it were to happen for the GeForce flagship – admittedly, that doesn’t seem likely at this point – it would be a potentially big boost for the RTX 5090.
We’ve also seen some alleged specs for an RTX 5090 from Chiphell forum user Panzerlied, a fairly reliable hardware leaker. According to a now-deleted post, the RTX 5090 will boast some impressive spec upgrades over the RTX 4090:
| Specification | RTX-4090 | RTX-5090 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming Multiprocessors | 128 | 192 |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 | 24,576 |
| Ray Tracing Cores | 128 | 192 |
| Tensor cores | 512 | 768 |
| Boost clock | 2.52GHz | 2.9 GHz |
| L2 cache | 72MB | 128MB |
| Memory bandwidth | 1.008 GB/s | 1.532 GB/s |
There are also rumors that Nvidia plans to increase the base clock speed of the RTX 5090, making it roughly 30% faster than the 4090.
If all of these specs hold true, this should give the RTX 5090 a massive boost over the previous generation. The same report detailing the specs also claimed that the RTX 5090’s performance would be 1.7x faster than the RTX 4090, which is frankly insane.
Other rumors have suggested a 1.5x or 1.6x boost, which would still be a massive upgrade. Either way, the rumor mill seems confident that this will be a very powerful upgrade for the flagship GPU.
Another piece of speculation worth noting is that despite this apparent boost in performance levels, there are theories floating around that Nvidia will somehow make the RTX 5090 slimmer than the current flagship. If that pans out to be the case, well, this GPU is going to be something truly special.
Nvidia RTX 5090: What to Expect
As mentioned, expectations are currently leaning towards the RTX 5090 coming in second, right after the RTX 5080, which could potentially be the first Blackwell GeForce graphics card – though we still don’t know for sure. With some rumors pointing to an early 2025 launch at CES as we noted, we could even see both the RTX 5090 and 5080 make their first reveal at the show in January 2025 (or even sooner).
Another point that was recently raised is that the RTX 5080 may have a decent volume of stock available at launch, so can we hope for the same to be true for the RTX 5090? Well, probably not, as the problem with the Blackwell flagship is that Nvidia is definitely going to prioritize AI GPUs. Only time will tell, and we should take all of this with a grain of salt for now.
